Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1321: Original Every human language has proper names. Standardized Every human language has proper names. Keywords proper name Domain lexicon Type unconditional Status achronic…

Universal 1337: Original The more marked a basic word order is, the stronger the tendency towards having a less marked alternative word order. Hierarchy of…

Universal 1353: Original Whenever there are three or more summands and at least one is a product, parenthesization starts by separating the summand with the…

Universal 1369: Original The smaller the number of classifiers in a language, the more likely they are to be configurational rather than material. Standardized The…

Universal 1385: Original No language with free word order will have a clause final auxiliary. Standardized IF basic word order is free, THEN an auxiliary…

Universal 1401: Original If a language has either of the orderings (S ADV V X) or (S V X ADV), then it will have both…

Universal 1417: Original If there are separate forms for narrative and non-narrative past contexts, the non-narrative forms tend to be more highly marked than the…

Universal 1433: perfect ⇒ plusquamperfect Original The presence of the perfect almost always implies the presence of the plusquamperfect. Standardized IF there is perfect, THEN…

Universal 1449: Original In no language is there a special form to denote the metaperson ‘hearer’ in the non-singular. Standardized In no language is there…

Universal 1465: Original If some form denotes the metaperson ‘speaker + non-participant(s)’, then(a) in some languages it cannot include among its meanings any other metaperson;(b)…